Afterwards
by Emjen Enla
Summary: [Complete] Oikawa Tooru wakes up the morning after Aoba Johsai loses to Karasuno with puffy, crusty eyes from the tears he cried once he was finally home and shut in his room where the rest of the team couldn't see him. Or Oikawa goes to the Shiratorizawa vs. Karasuno match.


**Title: Afterwards**

 **Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjen_enla (Wattpad)/emjenenla (Tumblr)**

 **Teaser: Oikawa Tooru wakes up the morning after Aoba Johsai loses to Karasuno with puffy, crusty eyes from the tears he cried once he was finally home and shut in his room where the rest of the team couldn't see him. Or Oikawa goes to the Shiratorizawa vs. Karasuno match. [no pairings]**

 **Rating: PG-13/T**

 **Canon/Timeline: Mainstream; leading up to Season 3 Episode 5 "Individual vs. Numbers"**

 **Dominant Characters: Oikawa Tooru, a brief appearance of Iwaizumi Hajime, mentions of Oikawa's parents, Ushijima, Nishinoya, Kageyama, Tendou and pretty much all the major members of the Aoba Johsai team**

 **Pairings: none**

 **Warnings: angst, more language than is usually in my work (though only in the lines I lifted from the episode)**

 **Notes:**

 **-As always when I write a character who is largely referred to by their family name, I spend a long time angsting about what to call them when writing in their own POV. I eventually decided to call our beloved setter Oikawa because that is the way I think of him, even though he probably thinks of himself as Tooru.**

 **-So as you've probably gathered, I've started watching anime. I loved** _ **Haikyuu!**_ **so of course I'm writing fanfiction about it. Oikawa is actually my second favorite character (I think I love Kageyama a little more), but he's such a conducive character for angst that I had to write something about him. :)**

 **-I have ideas for a couple more** _ **Haikyuu!**_ **fanfics, but you know how good I am at getting things written, so I guess we'll see what happens.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own** _ **Haikyuu!**_ **.**

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Oikawa Tooru wakes up the morning after Aoba Johsai loses to Karasuno with puffy, crusty eyes from the tears he cried once he was finally home and shut in his room where the rest of the team couldn't see him. His body aches in more places than he can count, especially his bad knee which radiates pain. He would sort of like to go back to sleep, but he hauls himself off his futon anyway and staggers to the bathroom.

He forgot to take his contacts out last night, so his eyes are irritated from that on top of all the crying. He takes them out and jumps in the shower. He rests his achy head against the cool tile and vaguely considers the possibility that he's dehydrated—did he drink any water after the march? He can't remember. He soaks for longer than he normally would, and if he cries a little more no one needs to know.

When he finally gets out of the shower, he towels off, dresses in brown slacks, a button-front shirt, and puts on the lighter knee brace he wears when his knee's acting up outside of practice. He pulls a tan sweater on over the top of his other shirt not because it's cold but because warm sweaters are comforting, and he needs comfort his morning. Not a school uniform. He's not going to school today; he's not even going to consider it. He hasn't decided what he's going to do instead, but today he doesn't have the energy to be the perky, buoyant person his teammates and fans expect.

His eyes are still too irritated for contacts, so he just puts on his backup glasses. A glance in the mirror confirms that his face is still a pale, bags-under-red-puffy-eyes mess. He digs the one of the tubes of waterproof concealer he periodically steals from his mom's make-up bag out of the back of one of his drawers and applies a careful layer until his face looks smooth and normal.

Before he leaves the bathroom, he takes his cocktail of prescribed anxiety meds and antidepressants and a double dose of ibuprofen for his knee. If he's honest with himself, he could probably use the prescription medication he has for that too, but that stuff is so strong his parents won't tell him where they store it. He would have to ask his mom and then she'd force him to lie down and ice his knee, which is the last thing he wants to be doing the day after such a monstrous loss.

Once that's done he heads for the kitchen, stuffing the ibuprofen bottle into a pants pocket as he goes. He's not hungry, but an empty stomach is a horrible idea with the number of meds that he just took. There's leftover rice. He doesn't bother to warm it up; he just eats it standing over the sink, one eye on the door to his parents' bedroom. His dad already left for work, but he can hear his mom getting ready inside. If she comes out and sees that he's not dressed for school, she'll have a fit and force him to go.

He forces down the last few mouthfuls of rice and then a glass of water. The glass and container go into the sink along with his chopsticks and he hurries for the door. He stuffs his feet into shoes and pulls a jacket over his shoulders. He checks that he has his phone and wallet then yells goodbye to his mom.

Once he's out on the street, Oikawa just wanders aimlessly. He avoids the corner where he normally meets Iwaizumi to walk to school. He doesn't feel like dealing with anyone right now, even Iwa-chan.

He wanders aimlessly without really thinking about where he's going. He isn't sure where he can go for the day without someone realizing he's supposed to be in school. Maybe he'll just walk around until his mom leaves for work then go home.

His feet reach a small set of stairs. He looks up and realizes that he's at the train station. He turns to leave, but the billboard catches his attention. There's a train leaving for Sendai in ten minutes.

It takes him a minute to realize he's seriously considering it. As soon as he does he almost pushes the idea aside. Why would he want to watch his enemies battle over a trophy that should be his? He starts to turn away and then pauses. He isn't aware of thinking about it at all, but he knows that he must because the next thing he knows he's climbing the steps to the platform.

He spends the ride staring blankly out the train window, his phone resting on his lap, cradled in his limp hands. He's barely aware of the passage of time and it shocks him when the train pulls into the station in Sendai. He gets off the train in a daze, and after a moment or two to orient himself begins to walk to the school. He buys a bubble tea from a shop he passes because his headache isn't getting better. He half hopes that it will somehow settle his stomach—which has been queasy since his hurried breakfast—as well.

Oikawa ends up pressing the cold cup against his forehead as he enters the school. He keeps out the way to avoid being recognized, but he doesn't really have to worry about it. He's never posted a picture of himself in his glasses on any of his social media—hasn't even mentioned that he _needs_ glasses—so that's going for him. Not to mention the great captain of Aoba Johsai is not the kind of person one expects to see with a buddle tea cup pressed against his forehead.

He climbs several flights of stairs to get to the top balcony of seats. The steps are torture to his knee, but he pushes through and finally manages to collapse into a seat. He grits his teeth and straightens out his leg as best he can. He's tempted to take more ibuprofen but given the amount of other medication he's taken this morning, that's probably a bad idea.

He takes a couple more sips of his bubble tea, but then sets it aside when it becomes obvious that his stomach isn't going to get any less qualmish. He sighs and leans back in his seat, letting his eyes sink closed. It's not even ten in the morning and he's already done with this day. He shouldn't have come; he wants to go back to sleep.

Eventually he drags his attention to the match. Shiratorizawa and Karasuno are in the middle of their warmup, and Oikawa is dismayed to see that Karasuno looks like a completely different team than they did yesterday. They're all hunched over, shaking and clutching their stomachs.

As much as he wants to look down on them, Oikawa really can't. Before Aoba Johsai's match with Shiratorizawa during the Inter-High Prelims, Oikawa had snuck off to a deserted bathroom and spent half an hour heaving into a toilet. Somehow Iwaizumi hadn't figured out about it and Oikawa had been able to play the entire game with no problem. After the game, however, he'd felt shaky and weak and sick. He must have looked as bad as he felt, because when they'd gotten onto the bus Matsukawa had pressed a couple candy bars into his hands and told him to eat.

Now Oikawa watches Karasuno with understanding but not without annoyance. They need to pull it together. How do they plan to win if they're going to fall apart like babies right before a match? Oikawa is aware that he is being hypocritical, but at least _he_ had more sense than to allow his teammates to see his weakness.

The game begins, and the backup setter flips out and screams something about everyone calming down. He's on camera so he most likely just humiliated himself in front of the whole prefecture, but it seems to calm the rest of the team down, so perhaps it was for the best.

The game begins much as Oikawa anticipated, with Ushiwaka pounding the ball by the Karasuno players. Oikawa quickly confirms his early theories about this match; whether or not Karasuno wins will come down to the libero. Nishinoya Yū is the only other member of Karasuno besides Tobio-chan who had any notoriety in junior high, and Oikawa vaguely remembers playing him. He's a better libero than Watari is, though Oikawa would never admit that for fear of destroying the Aoba Johsai's libero's confidence.

The match moves on as point after point is scored, but Oikawa finds that he can't pay attention. He wants to analyze all the plays to work out the best way to defeat each team, but he can't. After all, it doesn't really matter anymore. He will never play these teams again, all because he wasn't able to stop one ball.

Headless of the pain, Oikawa draws his knees up to his chest and presses his forehead against them. His own guilt overwhelms him. Aoba Johsai should be down there beating Shiratorizawa and gaining the glory they deserve. It's Oikawa's fault that they are not. His sloppy receive cost them their last chance at this.

He knows that if he were to tell anyone that this was Aoba Johsai's last change they would disagree, but he knows that he's right. Yahaba, Watari, Kyotani, Kindaichi and Kunimi will get another try at Shiratorizawa next year, but they will not be the same team and they will not be fighting the same Shiratorizawa. Iwaizumi, Matsukawa and Hanamaki might get their shots at Ushiwaka or Tendou or other members of Shiratorizawa in college, but that won't be the same either.

As for Oikawa, all season he's been nursing a feeling that this might be his last truly good season. He's tried to tell himself that he's just being melodramatic like Iwa-chan often accuses him of, but he knows he's not. He can feel it in the grinding, unending pain in his bad knee, and in the terrifying achy stiffness that sometimes seizes the good one. He can feel it in the way his pre-game nerves get worse and worse until he can barely eat or sleep. He can feel it as his previous training methods begin to lose their efficiency, as he has to fight harder and harder to keep improving at the same rate as the geniuses. Deep down inside, he knows that his time in the spotlight is almost done; he will not be able to keep this pace up for much longer.

He presses his face tighter against his knees and grits his teeth. All he wanted was to stand on that championship court and prove that he and his team were the best. He wanted to beat the geniuses for at least a little while, instead he'll fade out and be forever lost in the blaze of their glory.

He's so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he doesn't realize anyone has come up behind him until they speak.

"Oh. You're here, too," it's Iwaizumi's voice. Oikawa lifts his head, unable to keep the surprise off his face. "You said that you weren't going to come because it'd piss you off, no matter who won," Iwaizumi goes on, jumping over the back of the seats to stand in the row.

It only takes Oikawa a second to rebuild his customary mask. He hides his raw feelings, his aching knee and his pounding head away deep inside him and presents Iwaizumi with the goofy, arrogant heartthrob that he knows his best friend expects to see. "No matter which side wins," he says with a winning smile. "I'm going to be able to see the other team's faces when they lose."

Iwaizumi's face turns into a familiar mask of annoyance. "You really are a piece of crap."

Oikawa tries not to let that hurt. It doesn't matter what Iwaizumi thinks of him, really. Oikawa doesn't really want to rehash his feelings with anyone anyway. This is the one day of his life that he really would rather be alone. He wishes that Iwaizumi hadn't shown up, but he would never admit it.

"I don't have time to sit around feeling sorry for myself," he says, and tries to make himself believe it.

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 **Thank you for reading. Please fav, follow and review!**

 **Emjen**


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